Parental Responsibility for People Convicted of Serious Offences

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I thank Edwin Duggan for creating the petition and the 130,000 people who signed it. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) for moving the motion, and the Petitions Committee for scheduling this debate on an incredibly important issue, about which Members have spoken so movingly.

The hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) talked about the re-victimisation of the families. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) talked about the current system failing children. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) talked about the brilliant work of Children Heard and Seen, which is based in her constituency. Every Member across the House has spoken about parental responsibility being used as a form of control and a continuation of abusive behaviour, and about the weaponisation of children.

Finally, my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside spoke beautifully about his constituent Jade Ward, and how she dedicated her life to her four sons. He also comprehensively set out the legal framework that underpins Jade’s law. As we have heard, at just 27 years old, Jade was stabbed and strangled to death in her home by her former partner as their children slept. When Jade’s murderer was given a life sentence in April, the judge described the attack as “merciless”. Like my right hon. Friend, I have met Jade’s mother Karen and her father Paul. They are devastated by the loss of their daughter, and their grief is without end, as it is with all murders. A close and loving family, they are determined to give Jade’s four boys the best life that they can, but they are held back in this because Jade’s murderer remains present in their lives through his parental responsibility to the children, even though he is in prison for their mother’s murder.

There can be few things worse for a child than to lose their mother to violence, but that trauma can only be magnified when the person who robbed them of their mother is their own father. While we have no official figures on how many children lose their mothers in this way, we do know that two women are killed by their partners or former partners each week. That is a tragedy, but these deaths are not random; they are not accidents or an uncharacteristic loss of control by a perpetrator. All too often, they are targeted killings taking place in the context of domestic abuse. Indeed, the most common time for a woman to be murdered by a partner is when she tries to leave, usually after years—sometimes decades—of coercive control and physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse. The act of murder is the abuser’s way of taking back control once the woman has attempted to break free, but it is not always the end of the abuse.

In cases where there are dependent children and the perpetrator has parental responsibility by virtue of being married to the mother or having signed a child’s birth certificate, his rights towards the child remain. Even a life sentence does not put an end to the offender’s parental responsibility. As we have heard, that means he has a say in where those children go to school or if they need medical treatment, or if their carers—often kinship carers—can take them abroad. This offers the perpetrator another means of control through which they can continue their abuse.

In especially harrowing cases, fathers have been able to block maternal family members from gaining residency with the children, with the children sometimes ending up in foster care instead. The fact that, once acquired, a murderer’s parental responsibility cannot be suspended without protracted legal battles is an injustice. What greater dereliction of duty towards a child can there be than to rob them of their mother and burden them with a lifetime of trauma?

The House will recall that every year, on International Women’s Day, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) reads out the names of the women killed by men during the last year. It is perverse that in some of those cases, having removed the mother’s right to life and the right to bring up their children, the father’s parental rights are not automatically suspended.

What about the rights of the children? Many will have witnessed violence and sometimes the murder itself, but at present they must be raised knowing that the perpetrator retains knowledge of and access to their lives. For some that results in fear that they may themselves be in danger, and for others it results in decisions being made not in their best interests, but to deprive them of opportunities out of sheer spite. Children Heard and Seen, a charity that supports children impacted by parental imprisonment, reports that the continuation of their father retaining rights over them is a significant traumatising factor in those children’s lives.

For the families of the deceased, the instinct to protect the children from the person who devastated their family is strong, but so is the feeling of despair that they cannot keep that person from doing further harm. Jade’s law would change that. It would reverse the situation in which the onus is on the victim’s family to prove, through protracted legal proceedings, why the perpetrator’s parental responsibility should be revoked. Instead, parental responsibility would be automatically suspended and the onus placed on the killer to go through the legal hoops to prove that they deserved that responsibility.

Let me be clear: this is not about punishing perpetrators. The criminal courts take responsibility for that. It is about doing what is right for the children left behind, safeguarding their rights, protecting them from further abuse, and trying to give them the best possible means to thrive.

As Jade’s parents have said, they want to stop another family going through what they have been through. I pay tribute to them for their tireless campaigning efforts and for getting this issue as far as they have. Jade’s law is a simple solution that would end the current injustice, and I am proud that a Labour Government would put Jade’s law on to the statute book. Nothing can make up for the loss of Jade, but we can make sure she did not die in vain. We can make this change and ensure that the rights of children and of victims’ families are valued over those of the abuser. I hope that we have the Government’s attention today and that the Minister will also commit to making this change.